Nightmares
by tastewithouttalent
Summary: "He always wakes up with vertigo." Between Steve and Bucky, peaceful nights are hard to come by.
1. Vertigo

He always wakes up with vertigo.

He doesn't know why. Maybe it's a product of disorientation, confusion so brain-deep it skews his sense of gravity as much as his sense of everything else around him. Maybe it's a product of his dreams, the nightmares spoken to more by the clammy sweat clinging to his skin than by any assistance from his shattered-useless memory. He doesn't know, can't hold onto the thought longer enough to really be curious; there's just a flicker of familiarity, recognition of the sensation stored safely in his body instead of his brain, and then a voice is saying "Bucky," soft and gentle and startlingly near, and when he twists over it's with the jerky adrenaline of a possible fight.

Blond hair, blue eyes, broad shoulders, a mouth soft on a smile that doesn't make it to touch the steady gaze. His head checks the features, catalogues the possibility of a threat; there's strength there, he can see it in the arms visible under the line of a t-shirt, but no immediacy to the potential threat. An arm is hovering over him, a hand lifted like it's just come away from contact with his hip; from how much warmer he feels across his bare stomach, it was probably pressed around him.

"You're awake." The smile widens, shifts out of pure comfort into something halfway to happiness. "You were having a nightmare again. I wasn't sure if I should wake you."

He can feel his forehead crease, an expression of confusion he struggles to fit to words. He can understand the sounds he's hearing - English, he thinks - but when he stretches out for meaning on his own tongue everything collapses in on itself, turns into sound either meaningless or in a language he lacks a framework for.

"Bucky." The smile is fading out again, a line of worry building between pale brows. "Do you remember who I am?"

"Bucky?" he repeats back, forming the sounds more as an echo than from his own mind. Something catches, a familiarity to the curve of his tongue over the consonants, but when he reaches for it it fragments, a soap bubble against fingertips, and is gone.

"Yeah." The line is deeper, the voice lower and softer. There's a rhythm to the words, a path worn deep by repetition. "You're James Barnes."

"Oh." He blinks at gold hair, soft mouth, long eyelashes. A hand comes up - his own - brushes against the clean line of a cheekbone. There's a prickle of an almost-there memory, a shape lost to dim light. Eyelids shift, blue eyes giving way to a flutter of soft lashes, and his fingers pull down, catch at the corner of lips like he's reaching for the smile hidden underneath them.

"God," a voice, and then " _Bucky_ ," rougher and lower, sounding almost rain-damp and sticky. A head turns, lips dragging against his fingertips, and then there's another patter of sound, meaning dropping into his head without any deliberate effort of his thoughts. "Go back to sleep." Movement: a head comes down, lands behind his shoulder. "I'll wake you if you have another nightmare."

"Okay," he says, thoughts too fuzzy to muster any resistance to the tone of command in that voice. He blinks, stares unseeing at the ceiling while breath catches into an irregular wet noise for an inhale, two, before steadying and smoothing.

"I'll bring you back." Direct, clean, the sound polished with habit. "I promise, Bucky."

He takes a breath. It fills his chest, expands to fit into all the empty corners, stretches out the tension that had collected there. It would be nice, he thinks, to fill his head the same way, to let memory spread out into the shadowed-over edges of his thoughts until he can recognize the face against his shoulder, until he knows the almost-familiar resonance of that voice or the warmth of the arm around his waist. He's still thinking about it when he starts to slip into the haze of sleep, near-delusions forming themselves into the shape of dreams in his head while unconsciousness is still cresting the horizon.

It would be nice, Bucky decides, if he could remember Steve's name someday.


	2. Instinctive

Steve can always taste the shout on his lips when he wakes himself up from nightmares.

They're not as common now as they once were. It helps to have a routine to his life, the shape of a military lifestyle smoothing the edges of uncertainty from his life. It helps more to have familiar warmth against his chest, a form no less recognizable just because the hair is a little longer, the skin patterned with scars, one arm cool metal instead of warm skin. None of that makes a difference, in the end; when Steve shuts his eyes he can breathe Bucky in, can taste nostalgia sharp on his tongue, and that one fixed point is all he needs to fit himself into this new time and place.

Still. There's a weight of memories inside his head, a burden he can't always set aside when he slides into sleep, and when that is what pulls him into unconsciousness it's darkness he dreams of, screams and blood and smoke, reaching hands he can't pull to safety and eyes wide with panic like an accusation. The hurt builds on itself, guilt and loss and regret coming faster and faster, until it's only years of habit from sleeping in close-packed barracks that brings him lurching upright in time to close his mouth on the scream. His heart is pounding a frantic rhythm in his chest, shoulders heaving on air as if he's been running; once he can trust his throat to obey his mind and not his instincts he opens his mouth, gasps a deep lungful of air and lets it go again as his eyes adjust to the dark, commonplace surroundings easing the tight grip panic has in his chest.

There's a wordless hum from the bed beside him; when Steve blinks himself into focus Bucky's turning over without opening his eyes, reaching out to fumble for coherency in the nighttime darkness. A hand touches Steve's elbow, pulls away, fits back in at his waist instead.

"Steve?" Slow, hazy with sleep, and matched with a yawn so wide it splits the name into double its usual syllables. "What's happening?"

Steve shakes his head, instant attempt at comfort before he processes that Bucky isn't looking at him. "Nothing." He reaches out, presses his fingers in against bare shoulder to trail soothing friction against Bucky's arm. "I just woke myself up."

"Nightmare," Bucky says more than asks. Steve shifts his weight, stretches out carefully over the bed; when he reaches to drag the blankets back up over them Bucky shifts his arm with the ease of half-asleep reflex to fit back under the cover.

"It's fine," Steve says, dropping into habitual reassurance even though Bucky is sighing like he's going back to sleep already. Steve's not even sure he entirely woke up. "I'm sorry I woke you."

"Mm." Bucky really is falling back asleep; he's rolling over onto his stomach, the weight of his arm gentle pressure pinning Steve to the bed. "G'night Steve."

"Yeah," Steve says, shifts his weight in sideways to tip slightly towards Bucky, to fit them in alongside each other.

They both fall silent for a moment, Steve listening to his breathing go slower and steadier as the adrenaline loosens its grip on his blood. Then the realization catches up with him, a burst of shock so sudden it pulls him fully awake again, and he nearly sits up again before he can stall the movement.

"Wait," he says, the word too loud for the sleep-quiet of the room. " _Bucky_?"

"Mh?" It's darker-shaded, starting to dip into the outline of irritation at being kept awake, the tone as familiar as the sound of Steve's name in that voice.

He wants to ask. The familiarity of the exchange blurred the extraordinary edges of the occurrence, the same way Steve sometimes doesn't remember what year it is for minutes after waking up. It's easiest to lose himself when he's only partially awake, until Bucky knowing his name is so obvious it's not worth commenting upon. But it _is_ worth commenting upon, his heart is pounding harder in his chest than it did when he woke, he can't catch his breath for the dozens of words on the tip of his tongue.

Bucky sighs, twists in closer to fit himself in against Steve's shoulder. With his eyes shut his features look younger, softened backwards in time over the span of decades until Steve can imagine himself smaller, thinner, the weight of Bucky's arm over him a restraint in more than psychology alone. Something arcs in his blood, pleasure so sharp it aches into hurt behind his eyes, presses his lashes against his cheeks even as he ducks his head in to sigh the shaky gratitude of an exhale into Bucky's hair.

Tomorrow they will be broken, the two of them forever visitors in a world not their own. The unfamiliar shadows will be in Bucky's eyes, the ones standing like a wall between the memories Steve craves more than any of the drugs that can no longer affect his altered metabolism. And perhaps Bucky won't know the difference between his name and Steve's own, come the morning. But Steve stays quiet anyway, lets Bucky's breathing dip slow and heavy into unconsciousness as his own painful joy soothes into contentment warm and comforting under his skin.

In the dark, they can't see their scars.


End file.
